A Bit of Education
by Nova Sinfonia
Summary: Our Little Alex goes to music college, but what will happen when his old and new lives collide? First-person POV, set a year after the book ends.
1. Bloody Harmony

**Author's Note: I do NOT own anything of the original story or characters, and any characters I've invented, such as the Singh family, are not based on any real person living or dead. The story is based more on the book than the movie, though I'm taking a couple of things from the film. Assume Alex's last name is DeLarge and he has the same general looks (tall, blue eyes, brown hair) for instance. Setting is vaguely in the present day, two years after the book ends… I'm Canadian, not British, so feel free to catch me on any North Americanisms… Okay, enough blabbing. Please R & R (read and review, though resting and relaxing is also fun)**

**A Bit of Education **

1. Bloody Harmony

I woke up at oh eight oh five on a Saturday morning to the adverts on Classical One. Being shagged and fagged (meaning tired, O little brothers, though for some reason Harmony Singh smecks hu hu hu when I use those slovos), I hadn't awoken to my malenky radio alarm at oh seven three oh. I'd kind of slooshied Handel's "Comfort Ye" in my dream, in which I'd been hit by an auto on the highroad and lay there dying in a pool of krovvy, and a very horrorshow devotchka with like floating black hair was holding me in her rookers and comforting me. What a load of cal. Better that scene with Puccini, not Handel. But anyway, an advert was what woke me. _Geoffrey Plautus Music Conservatory, 1985 Avenue Winterson, London. We offer degrees in Instrumental Studies, Vocal Studies, Music History, Jazz, Electroacoustics and Composition._

This gave me like a reminder. I jumped out of bed with my glazzies still half-closed, ticker-tocker beating triple-time. "Compose thyself, Alex," I ordered. Today was the day I'd be moving out of old Flatblock 18A. At the old age of nineteen and ten days, it was time for thy droog and brother to itty off on his oddy knocky, so to speak.

I chose my platties with care, as I had to work a bolshy Saturday shift at the National Gramodisc Archives first. I had one droog there, not a droog to do the old crasting and dratsing with, no, but a smartish law-abiding veck, that being old Harmony Singh. It was our rabbit, or job, to digitally transfer music from vinyls to computers and modern shiny discs. Harmony was good at that, him being a tekky sort. Also, brothers, it may behooveth you to know I was moving into his domy, Flatblock 19S, right after today's rabbit. Harm was looking for a roommate, as he called it, and there little Alex was.

Anyway, I put on shiny black pantaloons and a lily-white shirt, complete with a red cravat that was the heighth of fashion for poor rabbiting malchicks like myself. Then I gave Harmy Singh a ring.

"'Ello?" he said, not very skorry with the telephone—he'd picked it up on the fourth ring.

"My sincerest appy polly loggies, as the day is still molodoy and nothing of muchness is sloochatting so far, but I'd had a choodnessy messel I should converse with thou, O malenky Harmony Singh, before ittying off to the Gramodisc mesto," I said, all dobby and polite.

A pause while he made grumbling and chumbling shooms. Finally, and not so dobby or polite: "Alex? It's eight fifteen in the morning. Speak English. And don't call me bloody Harmony neither."

"My sincerest appleologies, Bloody Harmony," I repeated, though growing a little razdraz inside at his dimness.

"My name is Harmeet," he said peevishly. "Not Harmony."

"Fear not, Harmony, let it not bother thee. I merely presumed to inquire whether I could bring my new shiny electronic piano to thy humble abode when I arrive. Worry not, I'll bring ooko—er, ear phones."

I could barely pony him through all his yawning, but I think I slooshied, "Yeah, mate, whatever," before the phone beeped brzip and went dead.

Not to get all weepy boo-hoo with you, little brothers and sisters, but sometimes I am afraid I cannot keep what gloopy people call _friendships_. Little Alex has his natural charisma, yes, but as of late, other lewdies seem not to viddy it. They treat your humble narrator like any other gloopy veck and not the horrorshow malchick that was.

My old droogs are all gone, or changed. Old Georgie was dealt the off, for good, by some starry rich veck in a mansion; traitor Dim is a vonny stinking millicent with vonny fatboy Billyboy; and my second batch of droogs Len, Rick, and Bully are now tolchocking lewdies and crasting pretty polly without me. I'd grown like weary of the old ultraviolence, except for wanting to tolchock certain vecks (such as old Harmony) when they acted particularly dim (such as today). But civilized lewdies, as my old papa says, solve their problems with their goloss not their fists. Still, I viddy I could razrez traitor Dim in a fight...

Oh yes, and there's old Pete. Old Pete is settled and married to a nice dobby devotchka called Georgina. I viddy him, now and again, herewise and therewise. That's another veshch, finding a devotchka. Some ptitsas might flirt with your humble narrator, even consent to a bit of pol, but when it comes to what gloopy people call _relationships_, I'm still on my oddy knocky.

But one veshsch in my jeezny at a time, because less than a week after I move into Harmy Singh's Flatblock 19B domy, I become a bolshy big intellectual university sort of veck. Righty right. Your Alex has been accepted to Geoffrey Plautus' Conservatory, Major in Music Composition.


	2. Sweet Melody

**A/N: A longer chapter this time - I figured I should get some writing done while I still could. Two cautions for the reader: one, this chapter contains several references to violence; and two, there's more talk than action. Paradox? Maybe. But enjoy!**

2. Sweet Melody

The autobus yeckated down Marghanita Boulevard, past Boothby Avenue and on downtown. Not too many lewdies were about this morning, save tired groups of chellovecks and cheenas waiting for the bus to open its yawning like mouth and swallow them in one gurgling gulp. These vecks and cheenas sat down, themselves doing their bit of yawning, then opening the gazetta or a briefcase or a chasha of steaming hot coffee. After a while there was no room no more to sit, brothers, so people held on to the hand-rails while big bolshy buildings and office towers went by outside.

A rooker gripped my right pletcho, or shoulder, and I turned around.

"Pardon me." An old starry cheena with lines down her litso removed her hand from my person and said, again, "Pardon me. I am very tired, I would very much like..."

"Yes, yes," I said quickly, not wanting to get into a bitva with some malenky baboochka about who deserves to sit on seats in buses even if she'd just got on and I'd been there a quarter-hour. I stood up, very gracious like, and bowed to her, waving with my rooker at the seat.

She sat. She smiled at me and went, "Oh, God bless you son, you're one in a million," and all that cal. "Say," and then she stopped, her liny old litso crinkling up even more, "haven't I seen you somewhere? The Duke of New York, perhaps? I think you were with your friends... you bought drinks for us girls..."

Very skorry this time I said, "No, no, not at all. It was different people altogether," and turned to face ahead. You might think me over-cautious, brothers, but the Duke of New York was part of my not-so-dobby jeezny. I didn't want the whole vonny world to know about it.

The baboochka nodded slow-like, and turned to the window.

The autobus finally stopped at an Underground station but I wasn't going on the tube, oh no, but on my own two nogas to the Gramodisc mesto three blocks away. It was a bright August day and the street was lit by the shining litso of old Sol. I'd half a rassoodock to sing some gloopy tune about how beautiful and sunny it was, but, little brothers, thou knowest I don't sing gloopy songs about the weather.

The National Gramodisc Archives had its eemya in gold letters over the front door. I opened it and ittied into this like foyer, where I punched my code 6655321 into a silver box to open the next set of doors. After that, brothers, I was in the main mesto, a large square room with row upon row of bookshelves. An open space in the front held a few malenky tables for computers, sound machines with knobs and dials, and even a real gramophone, quite starry and dorogoy. Mr. Cordwell, my employer, walked by carrying a stack of discs piled up to his glazzies. He nodded hello and I nodded back at his blinking glazzies and bald gulliver. Mr. Cordwell always ittied back and forth real skorry as if something very very important were vareeting.

Harmony Singh, already seated at a computer, greeted Your Humble Narrator with, "Hi Alex, you're late."

"I am not late, brother," I said with dignity. "You are merely early."

Harmony was a medium-sized malchick with black hair, brownish skin, and a pair of otchkies or spectacles. He had a friendly sort of casual manner, though a bad tendency to smeck at veshches he did not understand. Right now he was govoreeting, "So I'm your brother now, am I? Don't mind that, it's better being called 'brother' than 'Harmony', and to be honest I'd rather have you as a brother than that brat Jaydeep, although if I had to pick between you and _Melody_, now, I'd have to pick her, since she's a better sister than most…"

That was funny, a ptitsa named Melody being his sister. "Melody and Harmony Singh!" I started to laugh, softly at first, he he he.

He wheeled around in his swivel-chair. "God you're annoying sometimes. My name is Harmeet. Harmeet Omar Singh. Harmeet Harmeet Harmeet. Okay, so some people don't know how to spell my name because it sounds strange to them. And other people, when I tell them my name is Harmeet Singh, they say, 'Oh, like the cricketer' or "Oh, like the footballer' and I have to tell them I can't kick a ball to save my life—it's true, Alex, stop laughing, the only balls I'll kick are yours if you keep being so bloody annoying. Because no one, Alex, NO ONE except for you calls me Harmony! Even when people know that my twin sister's named Melody they _still_ don't call me Harmony. I've lived nineteen years without people calling me Harmony and I don't intend..."

Brothers, I did not mean to annoy poor Harmony, but I could not help smecking. Laughter bubbled out of me like red red krovvy out of a smashed-in rot. No, no: like crystal-clear water out of a fountain surrounded by butterflies and sweet sladky flowers and like leaping dolphins. I needed not think of the old ultraviolence. That was not anymore my eegra. Anyway, I smecked ha ha ha, saying, "Twins! Harmony and Melody! Melody and Harmony!"

"MY NAME IS HARMEET," said Harmony, his litso growing red.

Mr. Cordwell ittied back with a smaller rookerful of discs. I could just viddy his rot move as he govoreeted, "Mr. Singh, stop telling Mr. DeLarge what your name is. Mr. DeLarge already knows your name. Mr. DeLarge, please sit in your seat and get to work. Where's Mr. Purcell? He's late." Then the veck hurried away.

I donned my ooko-phones and onned the machine, it making glorpy beeps and bops as it booted up. Today's rabbit was to adjust the volume balance on an old recording of Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_ because the strings were so gromky you could hardly slooshy the woodwinds. After five minootas it was like I was in the land at a milk-plus bar, not that I was really in the land, you understand, only very focused, so when the zvonock went ding-ding-da-diiing to the shoom of Beethoven's Fifth, I jumped.

"O Harmeet!" I called, not wishing to make him razdraz. "The doorbell!"

"Get it yourself," he said, not looking. "I'm busy."

Dave Purcell, the other malchick here—I hadn't slooshied him come in—went ho ho ho and said, "You're like an old married couple. But Alex, as it's somebody as doesn't work here, it's your job to answer. Remember the like contract. New chap does the welcoming stuff."

So I brushed past hound-and-horny Dave, him with his yellow voloss and nose stuck in the air, opened the foyer door, and then the outside one. To say I was surprised would be an understatement, brothers, but it was a dobby and choodnessy surprise. For our usual visitors were professor-type vecks or old piano-teacher damas, but standing there was the most beautiful, well, at least the third or fifth most beautiful devotchka I'd ever seen in all my jeezny.

...

The devotchka had dark brown glazzies like metal chocolate, though there is really not such a veshch, with tiny old-fashioned gold otchkies around them. She was smiling, and her whole litso glowed in the sun like warmly. She had long black voloss that swung down past her shoulders and onto a pair of round horrorshow groodies, neither too big or malenky, but I wasn't really viddying those, O brothers, just the package she held in her rookers.

"Hello, could you please give this to Harmeet?" she said, holding out the package in one brown like delicate rooker.

All at once I ponied she was from Arabia or Egypt just like gloopy Harmony was, and then I ponied she was like giving things to him, so putting two and dva together I figured out she was his like devotchka. Which was not fair, O brothers. It was not fair that the so-called dobby malchicks got all the horrorshow devotchkas. In fact I was quite jealous of poor Harmony, which was like pathetic of me.

But I also viddied she looked familiar, maybe like a veshch in a dream. In fact she looked like the sharp in my sneety last nochy who'd caressed poor dying Alex in her rookers while G. F. Handel's "Comfort Ye" flowed on in the background. Still there was something about her glazzies and otchkies that reminded me of someone in real real life, and I was frozen for a minoota trying to remember if I'd fillied with her in the past. I hoped not. I viddied old pictures in my mind: me yanking off a devotchka's spectacles and grinding them to dust with a stomp and twist of the old sabog while Dim laughed hu hu hu, me tolchocking another young ptitsa for fun and pulling her black voloss to make her creech in unholy terror while I waited patiently for my other droogs to itty out of a grocery shop, and us all doing the old in-out on a different ptitsa in the backlot outside the Filmdrome sinny a few weeks before I was finally loveted. But none of these devotchkas in my mind-pictures looked exactly like her.

I thought of all that, brothers, and while these messels came to my mozg the devotchka smiled again and said, slow-like this time as if I was dim, "Could you please give this to my brother Harmeet for me?"

Welly welly well. "Your brother, you say?"

"Yes, he's the one with the glasses sort of like mine. He's probably wearing a buttoned shirt. He..."

"Oh, I know who he is." That explained her familiar-looking litso. I took the package from her real skorry and shook her right rooker. "And thou must be his sister Melody Singh. A lovely eemya."

"Well, thanks," she said, and smiled again. It was bliss and gorgeosity, like violin sunbeams shining out of a blue oboe sky. Then she pointed at the package veshch and said, "It's actually for some guy called Alex. He's moving in to my brother's apartment, see, and my mum got all worried and concerned that this Alex wouldn't have enough school supplies since he's from the A Flatblocks and therefore poor and starving, which I don't think likely, but anyway she bought him two hundred sheets of music paper, six notebooks, and thirty pens and pencils and they're all in there." She pointed at the package I had plopped on the ground, it being heavy from all these like skolliwoll supplies for poor starving me. "I wonder if he needs it. I guess I'll meet him soon, since we're both going to the music college, Harmeet and I. He's in Electro of course, and I'm in regular Comp... Do you think my mother's completely daft, giving this guy all that stuff?"

This devotchka Melody looked at Your Humble Narrator, expecting an answer. "I think," I govoreeted carefully, "that this Alex veck will already have pens and pencils, but will be in need of paper to write music on, and notebooks to write notes in, him being too dim and not oomny enough to have viddied the need for such veshches before."

Suddenly Melody frowned, and it was like the clouds had clouded in or some nazz had dealt a flip tolchock to a violin, making it go skreeeek real oozhnassny. "You talk like... oh never mind. At least the words sound nicer when you say them."

"You mean," I leaned in closer, blink-blinking my blue glazzies, "the slovos have a dobbier shoom when I govoreet them?"

She didn't giggle or go pink and bezoomny. Instead she shrugged her pletchoes.

I tried again. "This name Melody," I asked, for I was very curious, brothers, "does it mean a different meaning in Egyptian?"

Now she smotted at me like I was bezoomny. "Egyptian?"

"Yes, yes, does 'Melody', which is a slovo meaning the tune of a song in English, have another meaning in the Egyptian language?"

She looked very confused, poor ptitsa. Maybe she was a malenky bit dim herself. "I don't _think_ so. I don't think it does."

"But, but, why did your pee and em give you the name Melody instead of an Egyptian name like Harmeet?"

The devotchka sighed, whoouff, and said with a toss of her gulliver, "But we're not Egyptian at all! Me and my brothers, we're all England-born, and my pee and em as you call them are from India. And the reason my name is a plain English name is because my mother, when she first came here, lived next to a record store called Melodia, I think it's still around but I don't go that way much because it's dangerous, and when I was born she felt nostalgic and named me after the bleeding shop. But she thought 'Melodia' too flowery so she called me plain Melody."

"Sweet Melody," I corrected her, and clicked-clicked with my yazhick or tongue while she flushed pinkish at last.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Here I am arguing with a complete stranger. I apologize, I really do. Harmeet always says I talk too much. They'll be wanting you back at work, I reckon. But what's your name, if you don't mind? I may meet you sometime again..."

I bowed low. "Alex DeLarge, at thy service." Her rot opened in an O at that, and I went, "Give your em my thanks for the college veshches," as I took the pack and ittied away.

...

Mr. Cordwell's glazzies followed me back into my chair. "How's the Stravinsky going?"

The sarky, sneaky old moodge. "Very very very well, much thanks for asking... By the by, India is next to Egypt, right?"

"You must be joking," smecked Mr. Cordwell – too nadmenny, it would appear, to deign to answer my question – and goolied off the other way, perhaps to catch Dave Purcell also not rabbitting. As he ittied he grumble-chumbled, "Whatever _do_ they teach in these schools?"


	3. Moving Out

**A/N: Finally another chapter! This one's rather short, and I'll hopefully have more of Melody and the music school in the next. A big thanks to TheWeasleyBoys, Dan Sickles, 02AngelBaby75, gildedbutterfly16 and Pet Archer for your comments! I know there are still a lot of good stories here that I haven't read yet ... Yes, the boss' last sentence was a reference to Narnia (my brother's writing a Narnia story – he's a good writer and much faster at it than I am, but so far he doesn't want to post on this site – I'll have to convince him that even Shakespeare wrote fanfiction, or something). Also I fixed a spelling mistake from the last chapter. Happy reading!**

3. Moving Out

Once I got back to Flatblock 18A, O little brothers, I viddied my pee and em packing box after box into a rented auto.

"Bon joor," I said, which is French for hello. "How goes it?"

Em made a sighing shoom, put down the box she carried, and patted me on the gulliver real bezoomny. "I'm going to miss you, son," she said, her goloss all trembly.

I didn't want her to start platching right then and there so I said, "Yes yes yes. Me as well. But I will not be more than fifteen minutes away, and right near the consy-vurry-tory."

"The what, son? Oh, the conservatory. Oh yes." She took me in her rookers and like squeezed me tight.

"Ouch," I said. I had to break free, brothers, because right then I viddied and slooshied something quite distressing.

One of our neighbours, a fat greasy sort of moodge, was holding the door open for my pee who carried a bolshy box of my belongings. That was not the distressing part. _This_ was the distressing part: The neighbour veck, as Pee was passing, growled in a low goloss, "Don't tell me that miserable hooligan is finally leaving! For once we'll have some peace and quiet around here."

Instead of defending his one and only son, my pee just shrugged his pletchoes and let out a single little slovo—"Evidently."

My father was not alike in rasoodock to me, oh no, only in plott. He had the same brown voloss (with a bit of grey now) and blue glazzies, but he had not a dook of an idea how to govoreet with like confidence. In fact, with his humble chumble grumbles and his meekness and his _fair is fair_ sort of slovos, he seemed more like old Pete than like me. Well, if Pete wanted another papa, I was about ready to give him mine.

So instead of govoreeting with Pee and Em during the auto-ride, I stared out at the sky. The Luna was showing its pimply plott quite molodoy in the day, as the sun was not yet set. I thought of Pete, with his dobby zheena Georgina, both of them rabbiting full time, him an accountant at State Marine Insurance and her a secretary. That was one way to be. But I had the messel there was more to my jeezny than that. I no longer wanted to fight with nozhes or britvas, but neither did I want to rabbit all day and grow grey and miserable like old Em and Pee, like some kind of clockwork toy that other lewdies can wind up and set down and watch it itty on until it stops. No no no, I did not want that.

...

The auto lurched _rrrr_ and ground to a stop itself. I viddied we had arrived. Flatblock Z looked a lot like Flatblock A, only the buildings were real brick and not so grazhny. Ten or twenty purple like fluffy flowers dotted the lawn. Harmeet, that is, Harmony Singh, poked his spectacled gulliver out the door, then clackety clack ran down the steps to greet us. He was all harmony and peace and like civility with my pee and em, smiling how d'ye do and all that cal. To me he said, "Hi hi Alex! Long time no viddy!"—crasting, or rather borrowing, my nadsat way of speech.

I said hi hi hi back and went to work unpacking veshches. Inside the flat was a little hallway with a rug on the floor for wiping your sabogs on and two pictures on the wall. I took a minoota to smot at the first one more closely. Harmony was in it, a very malenky Harmony it was true, and next to him malenky Melody with a ribbon in her hair. They could not be more than four years old. Behind them were a veck wearing business platties and a cheena in a foreign-looking red wrappy dress, which I pony is called a sari. In this cheena's arms was a baddiwad baby creeching to high heavens, his rot open like an O and his fisties waving.

Harm goolied up behind me and said in a loud goloss that made me jump: "Yes, that's my family. Jaydeep's having a temper tantrum, as usual."

"Ah," I said. "Is that the malenky baby in the photo? Your bratty?"

He smecked a little. "Sure looks bratty, doesn't he?"

"I mean brother," I explained. "Bratty means brother."

He nodded yes yes but then frowned. "Jay and his friends talk sort of like you. Of course, they're not as smart. They're just trying to sound badass."

Brothers, I did not see how the badness of rear ends was related to the slovos of nadsats, but I let him govoreet on.

"...I'm a little concerned for him, actually. He's only sixteen and I'm afraid he's in a sort of gang."

"Oh?" I asked, interessovated now. "What sort of gang?"

He shook his gulliver back and forth. "Never you mind. You don't know about that sort of stuff and you probably don't want to know."

I had an in-grin at his like innocence, but I said nothing. Nothing, that is, until I viddied the other photo. This one showed the smiling litso of a pretty blond ptitsa with sunglasses. "Oh ho ho," I said. "Is this old Harmony's devotchka?"

"My name is Harmeet," he grumbled back, but that was not why his litso was turning red.

"Welly welly well! Old Harmony and Miss Sunny California, eh? I bet she eats like healthy vegetables and rides a bicycle everywhere."

At this Harm said, rather sharp, "She can't ride a bicycle, she's blind."

I went "Oh?" because this was sad, but I couldn't help thinking of a messel that made me smeck, which was: "Well then, Harmony brother, she's spared the agony of having to viddy you!"

But Harmony only said, "I don't know if she wants to viddy me much anyway. She's had a difficult life... But if you'd quit making jokes about how ugly I am and finish unpacking, Alex, that would be greatly appreciated." He was more melancholy than razdraz this time. So I obeyed his like soviet and finished unpacking.

...

Pee and Em were waiting outside to say their goodbyes, which Em did in a weepy sniffly sort of way. Pee just patted me on the back and govoreeted, "Now you'll be on your best behaviour, son, won't you?"

I fixed him with a sharp glazzy. "Evidently!"

And then they were gone. I walked inside on my oddy knocky only to hear the _ring bring brring_ of a phone and Harmeet saying, "What? Alex? Oh yes—just a minute!"


	4. Telephone Prelude to Wishy Washy Debussy

**A/N: In a bio of Anthony Burgess that I read recently for a different project, I found out that when he was a teenager he wrote a piece for his band based on Debussy's _Prelude à l'après-midi d'une faune_ and called it "Afternoon on the Phone"! "Après-midi" does mean afternoon, but "faune" is faun, not phone – like in Narnia. What does Narnia have to do with this story? Nothing... but not only is our narrator a former criminal, in my story he's also bad at geography. He might think Narnia's next to Egypt...  
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4. Telephone Prelude to Wishy-Washy Debussy

I took the phone from Harmony-Harmeet, and who but old Pete was on the line. "Hello, hello, Alex my friend," Pete went, in his new like gentlemanly goloss. "I hope your new roommate didn't mind me looking up his number—I asked your friend Dave from work how to contact you."

Dobby starry Pete, thinking Dave was my friend! "Hello, old droog," I went.

"Remember when I saw you at the Chekhov Café?" he govoreeted. "And Georgina was there? And I told you about Greg's parties? Well," he went on, not waiting for Your Humble Narrator to answer, "Greg's other friends are away but he still wants to have Scrabble night this Friday at seven. It's like a tradition, you see, Scrabble nights on Fridays, but it's dull with just the three of us, so we were wondering if you'd like to come. We'll have a bit to eat and drink..."

"Milk-plus?" I asked, with a grin. Harmeet, coming out from the kitchen, looked confused, poor veck, but said nothing.

"Oh no," came Pete's voice real skorry, judging me to be serious. "Some tea, some coffee. Probably a bottle of wine. Greg collects wine—he's a bit of a connoisseur."

"Yes yes yes," I replied. I was curious to viddy this Greg veck, from what I'd heard before.

"Oh well then, it's settled! All the best, then. See you later."

Harm has gone back to the kitchen so I followed him with him phone, but it rang again, right in my rooker. I held it to his ooko and he listened, then went, "Hi Melody... what?" He shook his gulliver in like amazement. "She wants to talk to _you_."

So I took it back and there was Melody's melodious goloss, a bit nervous: "Er, um, hello, Alex. I hope you don't think it too forward of me, but my mum likes to have the family all together for dinner on Mondays, and she was wondering if, if, if you'd like to come too."

Harmeet was in the kitchen again. I let myself grin a real horrorshow grin at that kind and dobby invitation. I was becoming quite popular again, brothers, and more—Melody herself wanted to viddy me again. "I would be delighted," I said in a very refined like goloss.

"Good," said Melody, like relieved. "You can go with Harmeet, he'll show you the place. Could I talk to him?"

I didn't quite kopat this change of tone. Suddenly I felt that Melody didn't really want to viddy me. Probably she was just obeying the soviet of her Em who thought me so poor and starving. With that messel in my mozg, I tried to give Harm the phone but he was too intent on slicing lomticks of cheese and like grunted at me to wait. So I gave my appy polly loggies and asked her one more question. "One more teeny tiny malenky question—does thy mother always act this nice to vecks she doesn't know?"

"All the time," said Melody, quite skorry. "Especially when they're Harmeet's friends." Then Harm wanted the telephone so I let him have it, brothers. After that we shared some humble but nourishing pishcha, pea soup and kleb with grilled cheese.

...

On the Sabbath I got together my new veshches: pencils, pens, notebooks, music paper, and a very horrorshow like briefcase to put it all in. I tried on my new platties, a grey suit with boxy pletchoes and a blue fractal-patterned kravat, the heighth of fashion among bourgeois-type young vecks. I combed my luscious glory to one side and put on a starry watch that I'd gotten from Pee. My room did not have a full-length mirror so I ittied out to the vaysay. But Harmeet, at the kitchen table with his little compy-ooter veshch, smecked at me and said, "You look like you're from the nineteenth century."

"Old Ludwig Van was from the nineteenth century, Mr. Harmony, sir, so this should be fine for music skolliwoll tomorrow," I govoreeted with dignity, and went to smot at myself in the mirror. I must confess I was a handsome veck all dressed up in my dress platties, nineteenth century or not.

...

GEOFFREY PLAUTUS MUSIC CONSERVATORY, the sign above my gulliver read. My heart went _thump thump thump thump_ like a gromky one-two one-two military march. I slooshied traffic noise behind me; Winterson Street was a busy sort of mesto, with tall buildings all around. In front of me now stood this bolshy red brick building that reminded me a malenky bit of a prison, but only a very malenky bit. In fact I was poogly because I hadn't been so skorry catching the autobus. I'd thought of crasting an auto just to get here, but I decided to be an honest lewdie and wait for another bus. Old Harmony hadn't waited for me, which was very rude of him.

"Hurry up," came a malchick's goloss behind me. This malchick had red frizzy hair and wore jeans. He said again, "Hurry up. I'm late for Harmony."

"Harmony?" I asked, puzzled. "I thought he was in class too."

"Not Harmony 2, Harmony 1. I didn't take Harmony last year, just Melody and Counterpoint."

"Melody?" I was very very puzzled.

"This is silly!" declared the malchick and pushed past me. "Maybe you're in the wrong place. Winterson Tech and State Marine Insurance are across the street."

I opened the door and goolied after him. "No, no, no, I am a student of this school. I am on my way to—" I checked my inked-on palm, trying to viddy the sweaty letters—"F-24."

"That'd be Comp 1. Old Geoff's going to give you a right lecture. The usual drill. How motivated and hardworking you have to be to even think about passing his course. Like at medical school, you know, all the blood and guts you'll have to deal with. Only, you know, the music version. Well, it's just down the hall. I'm going the other way. See you."

"Thank you," I said, but he'd already ittied off. The hall had malenky lockers down one side, like in grammar school. They were very small lockers. I reached the end of the hall and my heart started to beat _thump thump_ again, this time like a bezoomny drummer. From inside came the shoom of music. I opened the door.

Twenty faces smotted at me, including a very short, very bald and very starry veck standing at the front who stopped the music with a tap of his finger when I ittied in. This was the composer Geoffrey Plautus, only he looked older than in pictures. In fact he looked like my boss Mr. Cordwell, only black and with a pair of thick otchkies and American. That is, you could not tell he was American by smotting, only by slooshying his accent when he opened his rot and said, as he did now, "You're not to be late for class. Sit down. We're listening to Debussy."

"But sir," I like bowed my head, "I very much apologize. I am very sorry. The bus happened to leave before I could reach it..."

He waved his rooker, like conducting me to a desk. "Doesn't matter. Just sit down. We're listening to Debussy."

And we were slooshying this Dee Buh Zee again once he'd pressed the button. I sat on a chair between a beefy anxious-looking veck scribbling notes and skinny Dave Purcell from work. I had not known, O little brothers, that Dave went here too. He sort of smirked at me and went back to doodling exploding autos on a piece of paper. I closed my glazzies and let the music like wash over me. It was like waves lapping against a shore on a lonely beach.

The Professor composer veck, Mr. Plautus, dealt it the off all of a sudden. He looked around the room and his glazzies landed on me. "Your name?"

"Alex DeLarge, sir."

"Give me your impression of Debussy's Prelude, the one we heard just now."

I caught the glazzy of Melody in the front row. Her voloss fell like silk around her face as she smiled at me and I felt more like confident. I said, "Well, sir, it was very watery, like water. Very... very wishy-washy."

"Wishy-washy!" Dave beside me mimicked, and soon all the grazhny lewdies were laughing. Melody didn't laugh, but the ptitsa beside her, the only devotchka besides Melody in the class, laughed hee hee hee in a soprano like descant over the lower ho ho hos and hu hu hus all around. This ptitsa was more malenky than Melody, with short blond voloss and bolshy black sunglasses, and I viddied she was the sharp in Harmeet's picture. Even if she was blind and could not viddy anything, that was no excuse to smeck at me.

Even Mr. Plautus smiled. "Interesting, Alex. What you gave us is a valid sensory impression. Keep in mind that Debussy is often considered a musical Impressionist, though I doubt his contemporaries would have called him, uh, wishy-washy. Yes. Young lady in black. Sonya? Yes, Sonya."

The blind ptitsa spoke up, her goloss sladky but sort of boastful too. "I also noticed that he switches between musical modes using pivot tones, and at some points this frequent use of pivot tones destabilizes the prominence of any one mode."

"Yes," nodded Melody, very likely the only one who'd ponied her slovos besides Mr. Plautus himself, "it reminds me of Indian music in some places."

Dave leaned over and whispered, "And Pocahontas would know, wouldn't she?"

"Not _that_ kind of Indian," I hissed back. I didn't like the way he smotted at her. "She's govoreeting about the country India, which of course is next to Egypt."

Then Mr. Plautus told us that pivot tones were notes common to different modes, and that a mode was a key that could have a different scale than just major or minor. I didn't quite pony this part. But he went on, "As you can see, I am open to many approaches to music: emotional, technical, sensory, psychological, analytical, even spiritual, and preferably many of those combined. It is important that we learn to experience music with our whole selves, or else how can we write it? All I ask of you is attention, commitment, and willingness to experiment. Class dismissed."

People started to gather their vesches and itty out. That had not been a very terrifying lecture, I realized, and it had ended early, or so my pee's watch told me. But still I felt very small. Dim, even.

After that I had two more classes, Melody and Counterpoint (with the devotchka Melody and her little droogie Sonya, whom she helped through the hall, but no hound-and-horny Dave) and then Ear Training 1. After that I found old Harmony coming out of some class with an eemya like Sound Mixing, and he showed me to a different autobus, saying that we might as well go to his parent's domy now. I'd almost forgotten—Melody or rather her em had invited me for dinner this nochy.


	5. The Singh Family

**A/N: This was originally the first scene of a longer chapter, but I split it up because it was just getting too long. To recap on our main story, Alex is having dinner at his friends' house – Harmeet is his roommate, and Harmeet's twin sister Melody has caught the glazzy of Our Hypocritical Narrator - but will their younger brother Jay be trouble? Next chappy will take us into shadier places than suburbia, I promise... Thanks, merci, danke, arigato and shukriya to my readers and reviewers!**

5. The Singh Family

I'd taken the autobus with Harmy Harmony—O very well, Harmeet—down to a more dorogoy and bourgeois part of town. Along the streets were red brick or stone houses with malenky flower gardens in front. We ittied out of the autobus at a corner store called The Corner Store. Harm's domy was just down this street. It was like a malenky stone cottage, but with an extra floor. There was no garage but two cars sat in the driveway—one a starry faded blue sedan, the other a horrorshow black convertible.

I rang the collocol, but Harmeet like pushed me aside and opened the door. From inside came the von of warm pishcha, chicken and other veshches. A middle-sized cheena in a sparkly yellow dress—Mrs. Singh, it must be—rushed forward, flashed a zooby smile, and wrapped her rookers around Harm in a hug. Then she viddied Your Humble Narrator, still grin-grinning away, and shook my hand very vigorously up and down. "Delighted to meet you, Alex," she said in an accent that was more Bee Bee See than Arabian or Indian. "Come in. Sit down. Supper is almost ready—I let Melody and Jaydeep prepare it."

We all sat down in a like sitting room with couches, rocking chairs, an upright piano, and a real fireplace (though not lit). I was startled by a groaning shoom, but it was only Harmeet saying with great dramatics, "You let Jay cook? Jay? He'll burn the bloody place down."

"Now Har-_meet_," his mother began, with a stern smot, when we heard a loud creech from the kitchen. A young male voloss creeched a few not-so-proper words. Another shoom, that of running water. Then Melody's beautiful though rather flushed litso appeared in the doorway.

"Sorry 'bout that, Mum. Jay just bumped his elbow on the stove by accident. Burned himself slightly."

Harm let out a guff. "Huh. Exactly what he deserves."

Melody's dark glazzies looked kind of disapproving, but then she viddied me. "Oh, hi Alex," she smiled. "Survive the first day?"

Why did my gorlo feel like sandpaper? "Er, yes," I squeaked.

"Effin' soomka, get back here!" came the voloss of Jaydeep Singh from the kitchen. Soomka, now—that was a nadsat word. Where on Bog's earth did he get that from? Clearly not his Em or his brother or sister.

"Effin' what?" Mel called back, annoyed. "If you want to swear, swear fucking properly!"

Mrs. Singh looked like she wanted to faint and tolchock her daughter at the same time. "Melody Singh! Is that how we speak in front of guests?"

Melody flushed. "Please, Mum. Sorry."

Amidst this noise and commotion, the collocol rang again.

"It must be Omar," said Mrs. Singh.

Mel opened the door to a tall bearded veck, also with spectacles on his glazzies. "Dad! You're just in time for supper. Jay's busy cooking himself, and when he's done we'll eat him."

"Jaydeep's in the kitchen?" Mr. Singh looked alarmed. He took off his sabogs and hurried away to save his molodoy son.

Mel sat down with a grin. "I always say the proper place for men is the kitchen."

Harm grunted and rocked his rocking chair back and forth. "Yeah? I guess I'm just effeminate then."

"Effemi-what?" I asked. There were too many veshches going on at once, so I didn't notice Mrs. Singh trying to catch my glazzy.

She was shaking her head. "I am sorry, Alex, that we are not more organized. Your parents must be very different, I'm sure."

"Oh, they are that, missus. Different. ...Or maybe they are not very different." I could not speak, brothers. I could not govoreet as well as polite Mrs. Bee Bee See Singh or smecking Melody or cool-as-ice Harmeet. I thought of my Pee and Em ittying off to their rabbit at the grocery store, but they did not seem very interessovating as a subject of conversation.

"Everybody's different," said Harm like philosophically, nodding his gulliver.

His mother reached out and patted him on that same gulliver, saying, "Harmeet is my _good_ child. Even if he did quit his piano lessons for computer music."

"Mum, I'm eighteen," he said, pulling away from his mother's patting hand. "And I'm done all my lessons. I still teach piano to Aunty Suri's kids... and Sonya from school, of course."

His mother beamed another zooby smile. "Ah yes, Sonietta Keyes. Such a nice girl. A brilliant child. And she's only, what, fifteen? But so sad about her eyes..."

At that moment Jaydeep Singh ittied into the room and I had a good chance to viddy him. He was a shortish malchick of sixteen, wearing black jeans and a bright yellow polo shirt with the collar turned up—very likely the heighth of fashion among nadsats these days. His black voloss was all spiked and he wore no otchkies over his sharp hazel-green glazzies. "Welly welly well," he govoreeted slowly. "Let us not retell the tale of sad little blind Sonya—who is too young for thou, anyway, Harmeet—not in front of our honoured guest Little Alex." His sharp glazzies like stared at me and I looked away. "It _is_ you. I thought it was you by your eemya. I've heard a lot about you."

"Supper is ready," said Mr. Singh behind him, and we all ittied to the dining room (which had a chandelier with real glass, brothers, if not diamonds) but I was suddenly all poogly. I felt I'd been dealt a tolchock to the rot and couldn't speak. What had this malchick heard of me, exactly? And would he govoreet it to his Em and Pee? To Melody? My forehead started to sweat.

I sat down next to Melody and across from Jay. "And where have you heard of me, exactly?" I asked the malchick, trying to give him a look of like warning at the same raz.

Little bratty Jay grinned. "Oh, I seen your picture in the gazettas, like. The newspapers I mean."

Mr. Singh gave him a stern look. "_Saw_, not _seen_."

But Mrs. Singh smiled. "The newspapers! Surely because of your brilliant musicianship, right, Alex?"

"Sure sure sure," said Jaydeep.

"The newspapers!" Mrs. Singh was still excited. "Just like Vijay in Vienna! Excuse me, Omar, but I just _have_ to fetch the latest Classical Courier. Vijay is in there with a very flattering write-up." She ittied into the hall.

I sort of smiled at Melody but she averted her glazzies. Strange, very strange. Jay grumble-chumbled, "Not Vijay in Vienna again." Then he reached over to a side-table and poured us all some stew with parsley and lentils. He dished out mine from a separate dish. "Alex DeLarge special," he smecked. It was probably less spicy, brothers, that was probably why.

Now Melody served us all from a heaping dish of chicken and rice. Her arm brushed mine as she goolied around my place. This almost made me think, brothers, of gloopy things like love and harmony and togetherness and all that cal. I thought of the raz when my newish droogies Len, Rick, and Bully had smecked at this picture of a baby I'd kept, just a little malenky photo. I'd though, then, that I didn't want to spend my jeezny with these dim smecking droogs—rather I'd find a devotchka and have real babies. I could just viddy the ones me and Mel would have... her silky black hair and my blue glazzies in a bundle of malenky joy... Maybe I was crazy, brothers. Maybe the warm von of the food was turning my head. In countries of the Far East such as India, I knew they had opium and other druggy veshches, but they didn't put them in food, did they?

Now Mrs. Singh bustled in, grinning like bezoomny and waving a gazetta in her hands. "Sorry to delay you, but I just _had_ to find this. Here's Vijay in the Mozart Revival Concert in Vienna."

Jaydeep snorted. "Nice platties. Very like _dashing_."

The photo in the paper showed this orchestra, but up close was a young veck of twenty or twenty-two playing a violin. He looked a bit like Harmeet, but taller and handsomer and more serious-looking. But I viddied why Jaydeep said _dashing_ in a sarky goloss: poor Violin Vijay in Vienna had a white pony-tailed wig on his gulliver and ruffly eighteenth-century platties. Nineteenth-century platties would not be so bad, but poor V V looked bezoomny in his Mozart outfit.

"Look, I'll read it to you," Mrs. Singh went, "It says, 'Vijay R. Vimarami, First Violinist, who graduated last year from the Geoffrey Plautus Music Conservatory in England, dazzled the audience by his lithe and supple rendition...' or maybe it's closer to 'flexible' than 'supple'?..."

Jaydeep coughed, not quite by accident, "Horrorshow, Em, but can we eat now?"

Mrs. Singh gave the gazetta to Melody but Melody didn't reach out her rooker to take it. She was looking very sadly at her pishcha. So, brothers, I took the gazetta myself and tried to read it. I blinked once, twice. "These slovos," I blurted out, "they're not in English!"

"Horrorshow, too, Alex," said Jaydeep, taking a big rotful of chicken. "Very intelligent like observation." He set the gazetta on the windowsill. "Mum speaks like seven or eight languages. Let's see: German like that paper, English and Panjabi of course, Hindi, Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian... Russian?"

Mrs. Singh smiled and said something with "slovo" in it. The rest I didn't quite pony. "I'm afraid my Russian's a little rusty. I had to learn some four years ago for my tutoring but I haven't spoken it much since. It was all the rage at the private schools when the government tried to model itself after the old Soviet Union."

"'Tried' being the operative word," said Mr. Singh. "The actual Soviet Union was worse. But this is the only modern nation, and I include China, that has used the auspices of Communism to increase the gap between the rich and poor with such hypocrisy..."

While Melody's pee and em govoreeted about politics, I started to eat my chicken and rice. Jay and Harm were munching away, glorp glorp glorp, but Melody, next to me, stared away at the wall. "What's wrong?" I asked her, like solicitous.

She shook her head and started eating the stew.

Harmeet looked up. "Oh, it's just Vijay. Don't get all upset about him, Mel. I'm sure you can visit Vienna in the summer."

"No," said Melody, like sharp.

"Not him," said Jay. "Let's not talk about him."

But Mrs. Singh had heard, and she broke off her speech about Economic Relations to sigh, "Vijay Vimarami! Such a nice boy. So polite, so respectful. Always good day, please, thank you, _guten tag_, _s'il vous plait_, _shukriya_... Such a pleasant singing voice, too. And so talented."

"Nadmenny nazz," was Jay's contribution. "So snotty the snot drips out his ookos."

Melody said, in a weak sort of goloss, "He wasn't a snob to like a well-paid position in an Austrian orchestra better than he liked me. Practical, rather."

"Poor Melody, playing second fiddle to a violin," said Jay like merciless.

Now she glared at him. "Piss off."

I viddied it all now, brothers. Violin Vijay was my competition. So polite. So respectful... Grazhny bratchny. Let's hope he stayed in gloopy Vienna where he belonged.

"Melody, be nice," warned her em. But she put a hand on her daughter's rooker. "What about Jatin Parminder from Jazz Studies? He's a nice boy too."

"Nice," said Melody. "Interesting, no."

"Suraj Khan, the flutist?"

Mel shrugged.

"Not even Bobby Lee Chang, from Electronics?"

"Elecroacoustics," corrected Harmeet. "But no chance there. He's as queer as a pink rainbow."

Before Mrs. Singh could ask if that were nice or not, Jaydeep said, very skorry, "And not the sort of queer as in, say, queer as a clockwork orange?"

Brothers, I jumped. I'd been about to take my first rotful of lentil stew, but my spoon fell out of my rooker and into my soup ker-splash. I oosooshed the stain off the tablecloth with my cloth serviette and said, "What do you know about this clockwork orange veshch, Jaydeep Singh?"

"Oh, nothing," he shrugged. "Phrase I picked up somewhere. Don't mind me. Eat your stew."

So I took a bolshy gulp of this stew—_glolp_. Very flavourful, very very... My gorlo started to burn. My litso felt all firey. Even the insides of my ookos stung and burned. I reached for my glass of water and downed it in two swallows. Coughing kashl kashl kashl, I went "Excuse me," not knowing how to say it in French or German or anything-Jabby, and rushed to the kitchen where I filled up glass after tass after chasha of water. My glazzies watered and my nose dripped. My reflection in the window was all red and sniffly. Oh Bog. Where was the horrorshow fearsome malchick who'd tolchocked vecks twice his size? Probably that grazhny doobidoob Violin Vijay could eat twenty times this much spicy pishcha without blinking.

I walked back in, chin high. No use complaining and platching—they'd only laugh. But Mr. Singh asked, "Are you all right?" while Melody tasted my soup and frowned. Her eyes started to water a little. "Jaydeep Singh!"

Everyone looked at him. He shrugged his pletchoes. "For Bog's sake, it was only a little extra curry. Never killed anyone so far. Sonya Keyes even thought it was funny, that last time..."

"I told you, he's not mature enough to cook," said Mr. to Mrs. Singh.

Jay stood up, his litso red. "I _am_ mature! I'm the one bloody defending this place! If it wasn't for me, you'd have shaikas and bandas all over this domy, trying to get their grazhny malenky rookers on all these bugatty dishes and furniture and cal!"

"I don't understand him," said Mr. to Mrs. Singh. "Do you?"

Jaydeep stomped off, stomp stomp stomp, and I slooshied a door close with a crash. From his room came the shoom of loud music. Bog blast me—it was Beethoven's Third, the Napoleon Symphony. I viddied I had influence, brothers. My tastes were like finally filtering down to the tasteless nadsats of today. Only, when I was molodoy like Jaydeep, surely I wasn't so annoying. Surely I was a better and kinder malchick...


	6. Viddy Well

**A/N: A bit of attempted cuteness, but also some gruesomeness. No direct reference to the "viddy well" part in the movie, but you'll see why "viddy" is important...**

6. Viddy Well

Before I ittied off homewards, brothers, I paused on the Singh family's front step, breathing in the cool nochy air. The old Luna shone faintly in a sky still blue. The houses did not look so squarish in the softer light, and I viddied I could have grown up to be some sort of artist or poet or even a dobby violinist had I lived here instead of Flatblock 18A. But maybe not.

I was just about to gooly away when I heard the creak creak of a door. Out stepped Melody, a dark purple shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She sat on the step like casual, and I sat next to her, searching my rassoodock for something to say. I could not think of one single smart or intelligent slovo, brothers, until Melody broke the silence. "Alex? You're not still angry, are you?"

"Angry?" I skazatted. "Why would I be angry?"

Melody rolled her glazzies. "The man plays innocent... Angry at Jaydeep, of course." She sighed and shook her gulliver back and forth. "I bet your family isn't half as crazy as ours. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"Not one."

"Grandparents?"

"All dead and gone."

"I'm sorry about that. What about aunts, uncles, cousins?"

I messeled a bit. "Some up in Manchester, a few in Paris. I don't know them very well."

"Wait, wait—Paris, France?" Melody was like interressovated.

"Well, yes. From my dear papa's side of the family."

"Your father's French?"

I grinned. "With an eemya like Pierre DeLarge, _je pense que oui_." I don't know where those slovos came from, brothers. I hadn't govoreeted in French for years except to say _bon joor_ to my pee, deliberately badly.

She clasped her rookers together. "Oh, that's so _exotic_! You never told me you were half French. Someday I want to travel all around the continent. I'll go to France, Spain, Italy, Portugal..." She stood up and stretched out her shawl like airplane wings. "Greece, Holland, Denmark, Monaco, Lichtenstein..." She listed near twenty countries that were real and five or six she'd made up, but then stopped very skorry. "But not Austria. At least not Vienna."

"And why _not_ Vienna?" I asked, playing innocent or whatever.

Her otchkies flashed with twin Lunas as she turned her head. "It's too touristy. All that yodelay-hee-hoo Sound of Music crap."

I clicked-clicked my tongue. "Ah ah. And that is the reason?"

"That is very much the reason," she said, stubborn-like, and sat back down. Her shawl brushed my pletcho as she adjusted it. Was I bezoomny or was she sitting closer to me this raz?

I touched the shawl with one of my rookers and she did not move away. "Very nice stuff, this. A lot of pretty polly?"

She looked confused, then her glazzies brightened. "Expensive? No, it's just cotton... although in medieval Europe purple meant royalty. But I never grew up thinking I was a princess. No, no, I just used to imagine conducting huge orchestras in giant concert halls with crowds of thousands clapping. Selfish, but at least not strictly impossible."

She smiled at me and I felt a shivery sort of feeling I could not give an eemya to. "You seem very lucky, Melody, to have such a like kind and like loving family," I slooshied myself govoreeting. Stranger and stranger, brothers. I did not know what part of my rassoodock these slovos had come from either.

Then the ptitsa snorted, smecking like, and that odd shivering feeling went away. "Kind and loving? If that's what you call it." She spread out her left rooker and tapped each of her fingers. "Yes yes. Taking today as our example... first it's me acting childish and snapping at Jay the Rebel." (Thumb.) "Then Dr. Important comes home and ignores us all." (First finger.) "Mrs. Brain-turned-Matchmaker, my kind and loving mother, shows off by translating a German article about old Vijay Mozart, not to mention listing the names of half the Asian boys in the school." (Middle finger.) "At which point Mr. Goodygood decides that homophobia is cool and rainbows are pink." (Ring finger.) "And then Jay the Rebel says something _completely_ incomprehensible about oranges..."

I took her rooker. She hadn't tapped her little finger yet but I did not want to hear about Jay. Like they'd say on a gloopy detective show, he knew too much. "Slow down, slow down. You are talking very skorry. Did you say your father is a doctor?"

Melody shook her head and freed her hand from mine. "Not a real doctor. Professor of political science. Mum's finishing up her thesis in linguistics and then she'll have 'Dr' in front of her name too. Bloody deceptive I call it."

I did not know science could be political, brothers. I thought it was about atoms and cells and telescopes and all that cal. But I wanted her to viddy I was oomny rather than dim, so I said, "But Melody, don't you think education is good? That's why I'm going to music skolliwoll. To get a bit of education, like."

Mel grinned. "But not too much education. It's cute when you say 'skolliwoll' for 'school.'"

"Cute?" I raised my gulliver. "Spare a grown-up veck some dignity, sister. I am not, as you say, _cute_."

"No," said Mel very seriously, though I could tell she was still smecking inside, "no, not as cute as Jatin from Jazz Studies. Is that better...? But one question before you go: what the hell is a clockwork orange?"

I coughed kashl kashl in surprise. I didn't want to tell her about the Ludovico Technique, because that would mean telling her the whole grazhny rotten story. "Well, well, nothing really. It's just from this book, it's an expression for people who are forced to act like clockwork. Like a machine you know, like a robot."

She smiled, a softer smile this time. "I think we can safely say you're not a robot after Jaydeep's physiological version of the Turing Test. The Curry Test I call it."

The Luna shone silver on her black voloss. I reached out very slowly and touched it. Like very thin threads of silk it was. My rooker went under her chin and I pulled her litso closer to mine. "I can't pony all the slovos you're govoreeting," I like murmured, "but your lips look beautiful govoreeting them..."

And then Melody pulled back, frowning. What had I done wrong? I'd been gentler with her than any other devotchka, even the ones that'd fancied me. And I'd said _lips_ instead of _goobers_, brothers, because _goobers_ did not sound very romantic.

"My appy polly loggies," I began, but Mel shook her head.

"No need for apologies," she whispered. "It's just that someone might be watching. Mum still has her heart set on me and Vijay, if you've noticed. Jaydeep, well... Never mind. Can we maybe meet again sometime?"

And then I had a horrorshow dobby idea. "Right right right. As a matter of fact I _am_ going to a little party at this veck Greg's domy on Friday. Very civilized, with wine and cheese and word games. My friend Pete is bringing his wife Georgina, and he very much encouraged me to bring a date too." Actually he didn't skazat anything about it, but he would not mind, brothers, would he?

Melody squeezed my rooker. "Yes. Very much yes. Call me with the details." And as I was ittying down the path, brothers, she winked and blew me a kiss.

...

In my daze of mind I had turned the wrong way, brothers, and instead of catching the autobus at The Corner Store I goolied onto a different bus. I finally ponied my mistake when I viddied bright lights and traffic out the window, but I just stayed put, hoping it would itty back somewhere closer to my own domy. Finally, the traffic got lighter, the lights dimmer, the streets more familiar. Then I saw a mesto up ahead whose eemya I recognized: the Korova Milkbar. But when the bus turned left, away from the Milkbar and not in the direction of the flatblocks at all, I pulled the bell. Soon I ittied off, and set out towards the Milkbar. I figured I'd have just one milk plus, a small one, to calm my nerves.

The street was dark, but my eyes were very skorry at darting around, alert for trouble and all that cal. There did not seem to be many nadsats out this Monday nochy. In the grass next to the sidewalk I saw an open purse, and around it papers and plastic cards and lipstick tubes scattered like bezoomny—all the pretty polly crasted, of course, but one of the cards caught my glazzy. I picked it up and read "Public Library." My luck was dobby tonight, since the devotchka hadn't signed her eemya on it, so I tucked the card into my carman. I figured a Public Biblio card would make me look smarter, brothers. I could even borrow books with it.

The Korova Milkbar had not changed much. You could still viddy plastic statues of naked cheenas, as well as the newer plastic korovas, or cows. I nodded at the bartender and he ignored me. Well, brothers, I did not have to think I was famous like a sinny star, but for a young malchick I had a bit of a reputation, and some vecks admired me. Others would as soon stab me as viddy me. I wasn't sure where Jaydeep fit into all this...

"Alex!" some veck called, and I turned around real skorry. At the closest table were my newer droogs, Len, Rick, and Bully. I relaxed. Soon Rick and Bully were giving me friendly tolchocks on the back, I was sipping a milk-plus, and I felt like the Singh house was just a strange sneety. As the four of us govoreeted, the Korova filled up with customers. Noise blasted out gromky through the speakers—some very bezoomny non-song called "Like a G8" by Walky Talky and the Trotskys.

Bully was trying to govoreet something, so I leaned closer and bumped heads with Len. Len was short, skinny, and rather dim, but I didn't want to make him razdraz. When old Dim got razdraz, for example... not dobby for me. "Appy polly loggies," I said.

"I NEVER DID TELL YOU WHAT WE DID THE NOCHY YOU LEFT US!" Bully shouted into my ooko.

"Not so loud, please!" I creeched.

"Well I never did tell, did I?"

"Let me guess, you did some man-size crast and smecked away with jewels and diamonds?" I said. The knives from the moloko made this crasting and drasting seem like radosty again, but I kept my goloss sort of sarky.

Bully shook his bulldog litso, jowls wiggling. "No, unfortunately not. But it was very funny, this. I think you'll have a right smeck. It was just some little corner store called The Corner Store." Len and Rick let out a guff, right on cue. "The owner being a big bolshly chelloveck, we waited until he left in his truck on an errand."

"Then we all went up to the counter, real polite," Rick added. "There was only one other lewdie in the store—or so we thought—a gloopy-looking Arab boy with otchkies."

"It was this raz last year, almost egg-zackly," continued Len, "but I remember he was very like unprofessional. Slouching and all. Gave us a very bored glazzy. 'Hello how can I help you' but not very helpful-like."

"He wasn't doing his job very well, so he needed discipline," agreed Rick. "So I grabbed his gulliver and put it in a choke-hold, like this." I felt a rooker around my shiyah and shook it off. "Exactly. But this malchick was weak and caught by surprise. He tried to beat me with his little fisties, but I squeezed squeezed squeezed and then he sort of flopped over. Not dead but out out out. So we smashed the till and crasted piles of sladky candy and cancers and such, just stuffing them into shopping bags. Then Bully went and opened the door of the supply closet—"

"Hold your yahzick!" Bully interrupted. "I'm skazatting this part. So I opened the door to the closet, and this shest, that is, this huge stick, came out of nowhere and near tolchocked my gulliver in two. I ducked quick enough that it only hit my rooker, but it hurt like hell." Len guffawed ha ha ha. Bully glared. "Shut it. That's not the funny part. I got all razdraz and I grabbed at the air. (Still not the funny part.) I found myself holding a broom in my rookers, and THEN I saw that the lewdie holding the other end was only a little blond ptitsa, not more than fourteen. (Shut your hole, Rick, she near killed me.) There was a very fierce and murderous look in those glazzies."

"Very rude," Len said. "She tried to oobivat poor Bully and now she was looking at us funny, so of course we had to punish her."

Bully went on: "So I pulled the broom out of her hands. I gave her a tolchock on the brooko and each noga and rooker, until she platched boo hoo hoo at me to stop. Then I gave Len and Rick the signal" (he snapped his fingers—very horrorshow signal) "and they wrestled her to the floor, Len holding her rookers and Rick her nogas."

"It was the other way around," complained Len. He squeezed the udder of the cow statue next to him, seeing if it would give moloko, but it wasn't made to do that.

"Doesn't matter," said Bully. His big bulldog face widened in a grin. "Now that our little ptitsa couldn't itty away, I—"

"Stop," I govoreeted all of a sudden. I don't know why, but I felt bolnoy, not with any veshch like the Ludovico-pains but with this strange inside sickness. "I don't need to know what you did. I can guess it all right." I tried to sound sarky and bored again.

Rick frowned at me, and then started to chortle. "Oh ho ho, I know what little Alex is thinking."

"Get your mind out of the gutter," squeaked Len in this high falsetto voice.

"Please do," said Bully, in a snobby though more serious voice. "I have better taste than that. She was just a grazhny little shopgirl with a plain litso and hardly any groodies. And since she had such murderous little blue _glazzies_, I had something else in mind. You know how there's all these chemical veshches in cleaning closets? All these strong like acids and bases and things that are baddiwad for the old environment?"

"Is that where political science comes from?" I wondered out loud. People in politics govoreeted about the environment sometimes, and chemicals were science.

Bully gave me a very strange smot. "What? Hast thou had too much moloko? ...Anyway, and I'm coming up to the funny part, I searched round and found this bolshy white bottle of drain cleaner or bleach or some veshch like that right on the bottom shelf."

"Poison, corrosive, do not touch," Rick added with great joy and radosty.

"I took the lid off, gave it a sniff. Better than moloko plus! Then I held open the devotchka's glazzy with one rooker, and with the other poured _juuust_ enough of this cleaner veshch right in. She creeched like bezoomny. Then we did the other glazzy, and repeated the whole veshch a few more razzes, just for kicks, with the poor malenky ptitsa creech-creech-creeching away." Bully and the others smecked ha ha ha ha ha.

"But why? Why?" I could not help feeling this strange in-sickness again. I imagined I was being held down, and—no, Bog, no. I rubbed my glazzies over and over. "I'm going. I'm ittying out. I have a pain in my gulliver."

They kept laughing. "Methinks you can't hold your moloko, me heartie," said Len, now in a pirate goloss or some such cal.

I wanted to govoreet something very cutting but I held my yahzick. Maybe Len was right, the bastard, maybe it was the moloko. I stumbled out the door onto the now pitch-dark street. In the distance I could hear some lewdie creeching for his life. I turned back to take one last smot at the Korova, to make sure I was ittying the right way, when a pair of brights from an auto flashed at me. The auto, sleek and black, screeched to a stop and I started running. "No! Wait!" a devotchka called out. "Is that Alex?"

I rubbed my glazzies again. "Melody Singh!"

She drove forward a few paces and opened the door. Yes, Melody Singh. Good Bog, was I ever relieved. "Get in. Now. It's dangerous out here alone." I jumped in very skorry and she shut the door and spun the auto around, not quite lawfully but very skillfully. Some nadsat hooted and flung a rookerful of pebbles, but they just clattered off the window. Clearly Mel was not yeckating with the convertible part down. "So, what happened?" she asked me, making another sharp turn. "Did you see Jay at all?"

"Jay?" I said. I rubbed my glazzies. "Vijay R. Mozart?"

"No," said Mel, annoyed. "My brother. We thought he was in his room but he ran off again, and now Mum expects me to go and find him."


	7. Jaydeep and the Malenky Shaika

**A/N: Very sorry for not reading people's chapters lately. I've been going through a hard time, though no serious health problems or anything. **

**This time I'd like to thank... Google, for letting me double-check the Yiddish and Panjabi (I'm from Montreal and part of my family's Jewish, but for some reason **

**I can never spell Yiddish words right.) Also, I came up with an explanation for the name Alex Burgess on the newspapers in the film. Plausible, not plausible? You decide. **

**And when you're done the chapter, please check out my Audience Participation Alert at the end!**

7. Jaydeep and the Malenky Shaika

I was still rubbing my eyes. The moloko made me feel zoned out, but to tell the truth, I was upset by Len and Rick and Bully's story about pouring corrosive detergent-veshch into a ptitsa's eyes. Because all of a sudden I ponied who the ptitsa and the spectacled "Arab" were. Good Bog, I hoped that malenky bratchny Jaydeep wasn't involved with Bully's shaika. That would mean trouble for the Singh family...

"Did you hear me?" Melody said, voice sharp. She was driving (and a nice horrorshow auto it was too, sleek black and expensive) while I sat next to her, rubbing my poor glazzies. "I said I'm looking for Jaydeep, who ran off... Why are your eyes red, Alex, are you drunk?" she asked like crossly.

I shrugged my pletchoes. "Drunk, is it? Can a malchick get drunk drinking milk?"

Mel looked relieved. "No, I guess not. Try and help me then. Did you see Jay leave?"

"No no no."

"Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

"Not at all, little sister."

"Don't call me your sister!"

It was clear, brothers, that Melody was in a grumpy mood because of her no-good baddiwad brother. But I had a veshch I needed to like confirm with her. "Ah, um, Melody..."

"_Yes_, Alex." Her gullivers gripped the steering wheel and she looked straight ahead.

"I, I..." How to skazat to her what I'd heard through Bully's shaika? "I heard a very disturbing rumour, like, about Sonya from music school and, and your bratty Harmeet, I think it was."

Melody cut me off with a very gromky "NO!" She glared at me for a lomtick of a second then turned back to the road. "My brother is _not_ a pervert," she govoreeted through gritted teeth. "Yes, he's three years younger than Sonya. Yes he worked in a store with her. He's also taught her piano lessons for years. So what? They were friends. He's only had a crush on her for like, the past six weeks. If I were him, I'd wait until her sixteenth birthday before asking her out, but, but, but... You're worse than Dave Purcell from class. First he says to me, 'How's the climate around here, Pocahontas?' and then 'Hey Pokey, how's it feel having a pedophile brother?' Feels like somebody needs a swift kick in the rear, that's how. Bastard."

I waved my rookers in what I messeled was a calming motion. "Peace, peace. Compose thyself, Melody. Violence is not the answer."

"Right, but some boys, some _nadsats_, there you go, aren't so smart." She pointed ahead at two groups of malchicks dratsing in the middle of the road. One boy was tolchocking another with a rock and giving him a fair bloody litso. Two others were wrestling, which looked enough like lubbilubbing to make me smeck. Malchicks these days. No style.

Melody honked the auto-horn, GROMNK, and rolled down the window. "Hey, gentlemen! Any of you seen Jaydeep Singh?"

"We seen bluejay sing?" the rock-tolchocker parroted. "No we don't seen, nor do we care to have seen. Sod off, unless you want a bit of in-out with us, eh? ...Ow ow ow oooooow!" For one of the rival nadsats had just dealt the veck a smack on the back of the gulliver while he was talking.

Melody gunned the auto and yeckated around them, leaving them to their bitva.

"What I was saying about Harmeet and Sonya," I began again carefully, "had nothing to do with Harmeet being a pervert. I do not think he is a pervert. He can be somewhat arrogant, but that is neither here nor there. I was talking about what happened in The Corner Store last year. If I slooshied correctly, poor harmless Harmony was knocked unconscious and Sonya was blinded in both her eyes by some brutal thieving malchicks."

She looked startled, like some lewdie had dealt her a tolchock on the litso. "What! How do you know about that?"

"Word gets around," I said, being vague and not too specific, brothers. "Even malchicks have the tendency to gossip."

Her rot formed a frown. "Well, it's not like it's a big secret. It's just really terrible. She went to the hospital and had two operations, but her sight was completely gone. I visited her and brought flowers, I don't know why I did that, they didn't even smell much. She was all bandaged up and it hurt her to cry. You bet if me or Jaydeep or even your so-called harmless Harmeet finds out who blinded her, there'll be some serious vengeance going down. Not just platching and kvetching, mind you."

Now I worried about Len, Rick, and Bully, but I could not help smecking a malenky bit at her slovos. "Sweet Melody, nadsats do not say that vengeance is 'going down.' We are not American gangsters. We do not 'kvetch' either, like some Germy yahoodie."

I should not have smecked, brothers, because Mel got razdraz again. "Well, excuse my vocabulary! I just thought 'platching' and 'kvetching' sounded nice together, you brainless bhenchod. Look _that_ one up, won't you? And no, stop apologizing. I don't want to hear your apologizing. Using 'we' and all that—you'd almost think you _wanted_ to be one of those fighting, drugging, robbing, raping, murdering bastards that call themselves nadsats. You don't really, do you?"

Brothers, I was just about to confess the mistakes of my past. It was on the tip of my yazhick, but just then Mel brought the car to a screeching halt in front of the Duke of New York. "Look who's here," she muttered. I smotted, and there was Jaydeep, happy as you please, goolying out the pub door with his two droogs. There was a smallish droog of barely fifteen with a pale litso and short green voloss, plus a taller darker-skinned droog with his voloss dyed blue. They wore matching grey suits with suspenders and swim goggles over their glazzies. Quite gloopy-looking, although I viddied how goggles could come in handy around Bully's shaika...

"JAYDEEP SINGH!" Melody shouted.

Jay looked up, startled. "Melody?" His two droogs laughed, hu hu hu.

Melody looked up at the taller droog, also startled. "Suraj Khan? What the hell? What happened to the nice-guy flutist that everyone's mum wants their daughter to marry?" She turned to Jaydeep. "What'd you do, put out a call for Indian musicians to audition for your little boy band, I mean boy gang? Who were you expecting, Ravi Shankar? And who's this kid, shouldn't he be at home sleeping?"

"My name," said the green-haired boy with a roll of the old glazzies, "is Hal, short for Henry. I'm Dave's brother, so don't filly with me, ya pony?"

"Ah, Dave Purcell you mean? Charming. You got quite the classical name. Baroque, anyway. Well, fellows, there's three spaces in the back, if you want a ride. I don't mean to be a killjoy, but Mama Singh a.k.a. Auntyji Priya is worried sick about poor Jay so we're taking him home. _I_ was worried too." She sort of shivered. "I mean I was worried he was out with some real criminals, not you lot. All right, Suraj, why are you looking at me like that?"

The blue-haired malchick whose eemya was Suraj frowned. "If you're so worried about 'real' criminals, Melody, why are you sitting next to Alex DeLarge?"

Jay let out a guff. "Yeah, Mel, why?"

"You're Alex DeLarge?" went malenky malchick Hal, eyes wide. "Wow. Care to sign my sleeve? I've got a marker."

He held out his rooker, but she pushed it rudely away. "Cut the crap, boys. Just because Alex isn't all rich and bourgeois doesn't mean he's a thief or something." She opened the door and the malchicks shuffled in, one by one. I had a bad feeling in my guttiwuts about giving them a ride, afraid they'd say baddiwad things about Your Humble Narrator which would make my innocent though sharp-tongued Sweet Melody very very confused.

We yeckated back to the Singh's house, and all was quiet for a while. I shouldn't have spoken up but I did, brothers. I like sighed and said, "Very well, call me poor. I'm probably like lower caste to you anyway."

Then Mel turned on me, razdraz again, or at least annoyed. "Lower caste! What do you know about it? Our family doesn't follow _castes_ anymore. We're a big mixed-up mess of Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians anyway." She glanced in the rearview mirror. "And wannabe criminals. Right, Jay?"

Jaydeep smirked. "I'm not saying a malenky thing. I'm just enjoying the like irony of you lecturing me on being a grazhny criminal while sitting next to Alex DeLarge." He paused. "Ah, but speaking of riches, I heard your _ex_-boyfriend Vijay earns fifty thousand euros a year, whatever those are, and his contract with the orky dorky orchestra is three years long. So just messel about that when you start cuddling up to Alex, eh Mel?"

She said not a slovo, but the next time the auto turned I was tolchocked violently against the door.

"Watch it," Jay mumble-chumble-grumbled. "It's my car too, you know."

"Alex, can I have your autograph?" Hal asked again.

"No," I said. "I'm sorry, but you cannot."

"What an example for the little malchicks." Suraj was shaking his blue-haired gulliver. "So, Alex, killed any good millionaires lately?"

"No seriously, how much deng have you ever crasted at once?" Hal wanted to know.

Mel sighed. "Look, stop harassing him. If Alex really were a thief or a murderer, why would you want his autograph?" She rolled her glazzies to the ceiling. "The world is not making much sense today," she said, like joking but also gloomy.

We dropped off Hal and Suraj at their houses. Hal let himself in but Suraj had to ring the zvonock because the lights were all out, and his father looked a little razdraz but smiled when he saw Melody.

Then we were off again, and at last I could breath a sigh of relief. I'd been poogly that Mel would discover my past and I was poogly still. True, the gazettas had written about their "TEEN MURDERER" and "SUBJECT OF CONTROVERSIAL LUDOVICO TREATMENT" and all that cal under my em's last name, not my pee's. That meant the nadsat who did all those horrid vesches was Alex Burgess; I, Alex DeLarge, was innocent. Of course, if you viddied the pictures clarly enough you would pony we were the same veck, which I did not want Melody to know.

As we neared the Singhs' house, Jay made ready to jump out but not before he leaned close and like growled, "You can be droogs with Harmeet but leave Mel alone. Do I make myself sparkling crystal clear?"

Before she could ask him what he said, he was halfway across the driveway. "Besides, you only like ptitsas under twelve or over thirty, correct?"

Not correct. Not correct at all, the malenky bratchny. But he smecked all the way to the house.

...

**A/N: Audience Participation Alert! Since the next chapter, I'm hoping, will have a music class scene, I'm inviting people to mention the name of ANY SINGER, MUSICIAN, BAND, OR COMPOSER in their review and I will try my best to incorporate him/her/it into the next chapter! (Which doesn't mean, if someone says Paul McCartney, that everything has to be about Paul McCartney. Just that he'll be mentioned somehow.) **


	8. Close Your Eyes and Slooshy

**A/N: Finally done! I've got your Freddie Mercury, Duke Ellington, AND Burt Bacharach somewhere in there. (That isn't what took me so long.) Anyway, enjoy!**

...

"Close your eyes and see."

_Ulysses_, James Joyce, 45.16-17

...

**8. Close Your Eyes and Slooshy**

A starry grey-haired devotchka stood in front of the enormous class. "Welcome everybody. My name is Gabrielle Ravel, current President of his Institution." She gave a very big smile. "I understand it's either your first or second day at the Geoffrey Plautus Music Conservatory. Tuesday morning choir practice has been a tradition, since this school started, for all our first year students..."

I yawned, covering my just-brushed zoobies with a polite rooker. At oh nine oh one, the morning was very molodoy, and I was still fashed and dashed and all that. I mean tired, brothers. I'd stayed up late last night with Melody. No need to smeck at that—we didn't even touch goobers, we'd been too busy chasing after her malenky baddiwad brother. And before that I'd gone to the Korova and met with Len and Rick and Bully from my last shaika.

I did not think I wanted to meet them again.

Around me were one or two hundred malchicks and devotchkas, some govoreeting in whispers, others good and quiet. I was in an auditorium-like mesto, with the floor sloping up up up at the back, but it was for classes and not concerts.

President-of-this-Institution Ravel had three other lewdies up front with her, seated at three different pianos. One was Geoffrey Plautus from America, the like founder of the college and also my Composition teacher, and the others two middle-aged devotchkas. The grey-haired cheena finished her speech with something that made me very poogly and nervous. An audition veshch was vareeting right now.

Immediately the whole mass of malchicks and devotchkas, some chat-chat-chatting away, made three lines in front of the pianos. In my distress I govoreeted out loud. "Audition audition? I did not know about an audition. I was not informed. What are we to audition?"

A ptitsa in front of me jumped at my voice. She turned around real skorry, tolchocking my foot with her malenky walking-stick. Her platties were all black, matching her sunglasses, and her voloss short and blond. "Sorry. But who are you?"

It was Mel and Harmeet's friend Sonya—short for Sonietta or Sonatina or some such eemya—the know-it-all ptitsa from Composition. Suddenly I felt a strange feeling, like pity or some such veshch, remembering she hadn't been born blind. Len, Rick, and Bully had made her so. I shook my gulliver not to think of that, brothers, and replied, "Alex De Large, your classmate. Er, do you know what this audition is for?"

Sonya's pletchoes relaxed. "Ah yes. Sorry. Your voice startled me a little... but of course yes, you're _that _Alex." Her goobers widened in a grin. "The one Melody fancies."

Some malchick bumped into me and I realized the line was moving forward. At least Sonya could not see my rot hanging open in surprise. "Melody... said..."

She twirled her walk-stick in a little circle on the floor. "Yes, yes. She told me about you. Love at first sight. Very swoony, as I used to say. Anyway, we're auditioning for parts."

"Parts," I repeated like some dim shoot. "Parts, you say. Parts of what?"

She rolled her whole gulliver, like how a seeing person would roll their glazzies. "Voice parts, of course. Like soprano or alto or tenor. Weren't you listening?"

"Listening. Hmm." Being quiet, I could slooshy, past all the chatter, some piano notes and a malchick singing them back.

Sonya listened too. "About a quarter-tone flat." And she turned her back to me.

...

Then I tried an experiment: I closed my glazzies to slooshy the voices around me.

_Oh, did you make it to Greece this summer?_ An upper-class female goloss.

_No, we just did the Riviera tour. And Naples. We did Naples._

_ And I did your mum_, said another veck, not as dignified.

_I doubt that_, said the second one, and again: _I spent like eight hundred euros. Bloody exchange rate. _

From a different direction: _When's this over? Big Band's next and I hear we're doing Duke Ellington_.

So, not Naples or some veck's em. But who the hell was the Duke of Ellington?

A devotchka's voice: _Oh, I like the record with 'I Can't Give You Anything But Love.' Too bad I have Advanced Acoustics._

Advanced acoustics? Was that a disease?

Then, next to me, I heard a clear high voloss warbling Bach, "_Bist du bel mir_..."

I opened my glazzies. Sonya was singing to the cheena at the piano, a plump pink-cheeked lady.

"Beautiful. Soprano One." The professor lady marked some veshch on a sheet. "Farthest on your left, dear."

I was next.

...

Brothers, I hadn't known I was supposed to sing a song. My rookers felt very shaky, and my rassoodock blank. This professor lady smiled at me and said in like a Welsh accent: "Go ahead, luv, any song you know."

And, believe it or kiss my sharries, I opened my rot and started to sing "Wives and Lovers" by this veck Burtie Bacharach, it being an oldie warble my Em liked: "Hey, little girl, comb your hair, fix your makeup, soon he will o-o-pen the door..."

She started to smeck.

I stopped. "Why, what's the matter?"

"Nothing, dearie, you're quite the charmer," she said, laughing. "But if you want your wife to get dolled up for you, you'd best be prepared to dress up too."

"Well, well, I am not actually married."

She giggled again—"Only teasing, dearie"—then played higher notes and lower notes. I could sing most of the lower ones. "Very good, dear. Bass One. To your right."

...

I moved through the crowd of young vecks and cheenas still waiting in line. I viddied the middle-right seats filling up with malchicks, but these were all Tenor Ones; then Tenor Twos; then—"Oh, hello," said a familiar spectacled litso.

"Harmony Singh!" I said in relief.

A malchick next to him, Chinese in appearance, raised his glazz-brows. "How'd you know we called him Harmony? We've been calling him that since first grade, because of his sister Melody and all."

Harmeet's litso was red. "Bobby, QUIET. But welcome to Bass One, Alex... Ahem. Base One," he said, as if talking in a headpiece. "Command centre of the imperial fleet."

"You _are _a nerd," said another veck coming up behind me. He looked a bit like Harmeet but taller, with a bolshy double bass case strapped to his back like a turtle shell.

"Jatin Parminder!" said Harmeet Singh. "Join the club."

Jatin laughed and set the instrument down. "I heard Mrs. Jones call this one a charmer." He elbowed me. "A real ladykiller, it seems. He was just chatting up Sonietta Keyes. You know, the smartest girl in first year."

Chatting up, indeed. Why do some malchicks speak such odd slovos?

Harmeet frowned, then tried to smile. "You think she's smarter than my sister?"

"Melody _is _smart," said Jatin carefully. "And, well, I'm sure I don't know why Vijay left her."

"Money," said Harmeet bluntly. "He got a better job offer in Austria."

The other malchick, Bobby, held out his rooker to me. "I'm Bobby Lee Chang. Guitar, trumpet, French horn."

I shook it. "Alex De Large. I, er, I compose. And warble a bit. I mean sing."

"Yes?" Harmeet, startled, turned around.

"Sing. S-I-N-G," like sniffed Bobby. "And speaking of which, I see our scores coming round."

"Oh oh oh," went Jatin. "Did I win?"

Bobby tried to look down on Jatin, which he couldn't, brothers, because Jatin was taller. All of a sudden Harmeet dumped a pile of papers in my rookers, and I viddied "Hallelujah Chorus" by G. F. Handel.

"Hurry up, pass the rest on," went Jatin, so I did. I made sure I sobiratted all the music before smotting at it. I viddied Francis Poulenc's _Gloria_, an arrangement of "White Christmas" and "Jingle Bells" (and it still only September), a very strange piece called "Epitaph for Moonlight" by R. Murray Schafer, and an even stranger rock-and-roll veshch with a classical title.

Bobby Lee Chang like jumped at this last one. "Bohemian Rhapsody! Yes!"

"Oh oh oh," went Jatin again. "Were's four of us right here. We could be like Queen."

Poor Harmony was still razdraz, though I didn't know why. "I hardly know them."

"I'm Freddie Mercury!" Bobby fluffed up his hair and posed dramatically.

"Sure, be the dead guy," grumbled Harm, which like startled me. Because I'd just been comparing the three to my old droogs—Harm to Pete, Jatin to Dim, and Bobby to Georgie. Poor dead Georgie. Still, it was his fault he was a traitor. Dim's fault too. If I ever found Dim again, by Bog...

Bobby raised his rookers like he was playing piano. "Mama, just killed a man..." he sang.

Jatin held up his own right rooker, his glazzies on the score. "Wait wait, they don't have that verse. They have everything else, just not that part."

"Really? Why?" Harmeet asked. So he did know the song after all. I was the only like ignorant malchick.

Bobby snorted. "Guess someone thought it encouraged violence. As if you'd listen to a song and go out and shoot someone."

I thought on that a minoota. "Right right. Or as if slooshying Beethoven would make you want to knife a veck."

But he smecked haw haw haw. "Beethoven? As if!"

...

President-of-this-Institution Ravel had left the room when Geoffrey Plautus stood up and waved his arms for silence. "All right, folks!" his American goloss boomed. "We've just a few minutes left for practice."

This razz, practice only meant warm-up exercises, not singing the lovely Poulenc or Handel or even that merzky rock song. And as I was leaving I caught Dave Purcell's proud glazzy. Dave was the young veck I rabbited with in the National Gramodisc Archive and my classmate in Composition—as you know, brothers. This time he just smotted at me with this joking but superior look, saying, "Bass One? Bass Two is for the _real _men."

Harmeet was at him real skorry, skazatting this: "But we sing mostly the same parts."

Harmless Harmony had reason. Only when the bass part split would Bass Two sing lower.

Dave Purcell nodded, as if agreeing, and then smiled at me like innocent. "Just remember, Alex, I _do _know who you are."


	9. The Ninth

**A/N: Finally, the next installment—I'm sorry for the long wait. I was editing the rough draft of this chapter a few days ago when I got the idea to start another story based on it ("The Miracle of the Snowflake," if you want to check it out). But I'll be continuing this as well, though I don't know if it will go to 21 chapters the way "A Clockwork Zhena" will (Great story by Dan Sickles! Check it out too!)**

**Warnings: a) disturbing subject, b) our narrator not being**** sympathetic,**** to put it lightly, and c) this mostly follows the book continuity, not the movie continuity, or else things wouldn't make as much sense. **

9. The Ninth

I stared at Dave, my rot wide open. "What do you mean, you know who I am?" But as I viddied his nasty smirking grin, I knew. Like those malchicks in Jaydeep's malenky shaika, he knew that Alex Burgess (the teenage criminal the gazettas wrote of) and Alex DeLarge (now the reformed college-going malchick) were the exact same lewdie. Me.

Dave just made a snorty shoom and goolied off down the hallway. Cowardly bratchny.

When Harmeet tapped me on the pletcho, I jumped. I was still standing outside the door of the choir classroom. "Well?" Harmless Harmeet like demanded. "What was that all about?"

Cool as a cucumber and all that cal, I replied, "The veck knows who I am. Thou heardest him say so."

Harmless Harm raised a glaz-brow. "Dave? Of course he does. We all work at the same place, remember?"

"Right right right," I said as we parted ways. "Au revoir and see you later."

...

_The veck knows who I am. Who I am. _The slovos pounded in my head that nochy as I tried to sleep. Dobby Harmony did not snore, or if he did I couldn't slooshy him from the other room, but the roar of the autos outside kept me tossing and turning as I like slooshied their motors grumbling _Who I am, who I am_. It was nearly an hour before I got any spatchka.

Wednesday morning, Harmeet and I took the bus together to skolliwoll. I was far too busy for govoreeting, though. Like a goodiwood malchick, I was writing a list of my classes in like alphabetical order:

_Cwoir: Tuesday, 9 – 11:30_

_ Compozition: Monday Wensday Friday, 10 – 11:30_

_ Ear Traning 1: Monday Wensday, 3:30 – 5_

_ Harmony 1: Tuesday Thursday, 2:30 – 4_

_ Melody and Cownterpoint: Monday Wensday, 1 – 2:30_

_ Music History 1: Tuesday Thursday, 1 – 2:30_

Thank Bog I didn't have that much skolliwoll on Friday. Friday! Friday would be Scrabble night with Pete, Georgina, Pete's friend Greg... and Melody, who I like invited all on my oddy knocky. But wait: that would be five of us. Melody would have to be on my team. I wanted her on my team, not on anybody else's team. If I had to, I'd pretend I was illiterate or some veshch...

I was frowning over this like dilemma when Harm made me jump by breathing on my nagoy neck. He pointed to my schedule. "It's W-E-D-N-E-S-D-A-Y."

"Yes. Yes, it is." Dim kind of veck, wasn't he?

...

Composition teacher Geoffrey Plautus did not have us start composing today, oh no. We were still listening to samples of other like Great Composers. Today he started with the old oldies, like this very starry medieval chant by the English nun Hildegard of Bingen.

Her eemya was as new to me as it was to Melody; I saw Mel poke poor blind Sonya next to her and whisper, "See? There _were _girl composers back then."

And snotty Sonya said, "You can't call her a girl now. She's like a thousand years old."

All that class, we like fast-forwarded in time with the music – one minoota we were in the Middle Ages, then in the Renaissance, then the old Baroque era, then the Early Classical, and finally Plautus smiled and govoreeted, "Now I'm sure you've all heard this before," before pressing the _on _button for the fifth or sixth time.

When I slooshied the strong low notes booming out of the speaker, I ponied right away it was the last movement of the Ninth of Ludwig Van. I smiled a horrorshow little in-grin at all the lewdies who wouldn't recognize it until the "Ode to Joy" tune started up, the tune they'd learned to play in primary school on their gloopy plastic recorders or some such cal.

But then I slooshied and viddied something else. With a groaning shoom, Sonya Keyes pushed her chair away and with quick nogas rushed to the door. Not viddying where she was going, of course, she knocked her poor gulliver on the door-post and fell down. Old Plautus turned around, saying, "Are you all right?" while Melody rushed forward to help her up.

Melody looked very pretty when she was being helpful, with her voloss falling over her face, and I remembered the dream I'd had that first day, with poor poor me injured and dying on the auto-road and a beautiful black-haired devotchka holding me in her rookers and singing a Puccini aria. Or was it Handel? Or was nobody like singing at all? Never you mind, brothers, because the next thing that vareeted put it right out of my mozg. Young Sonya, instead of platching about her sore gulliver, threw her hands over her ears and creeched, "Please, turn it off. I don't feel well. Please." She was trembling like in terror.

Plautus dealt his machine the off, and Beethoven's glorious Ninth no longer blasted through the speakers. Sonya leaned against the wall, trembling like a malenky leaf, while Melody put a rooker on her shoulder. Brothers, I could not pony it. Mel's little droogie was afraid of the Ninth for a reason, and what other reason could there be than the Ludovico Technique? What I could not guess, brothers, was the reason she'd gone to prison. Having your eyesight snuffed out was not like a crime.

"How's your head? Do you need to see the nurse?" Plautus was asking.

The ptitsa squeaked out No, and Melody added, helping her back to her chair, "She's just panicked. Sometimes she gets panic attacks."

Panic attack my sharries. I caught Mel's glazzies, wanting to know the real veshch that was vareeting, but she just shook her head.

Old Geoffrey continued with the music, but I couldn't really slooshy even lovely Beethoven. My mind was too full of questions, especially viddying Sonya at the desk front of me, her hands clamped over her ookos, and Melody not saying a slovo to me.

...

Sonya's head snapped up and she gripped the table with both rookers. "Who's there?"

"It's just me, Alex," I said, sitting down across from her at the back table of the cafeteria. One end of the bench was broken, but that was fine and dobby since it meant we had the table all to ourselves. The other tables were so full of lewdies that you couldn't hear your own goloss above their noise. I'd been searching for Melody, but when I'd viddied little Sonya goolying slowly through the crowd with her walk-stick and tray full of pishcha. I hadn't gotten any pishcha myself yet, brothers, but there were more important veshches to do. "Isn't it unusual," I govoreeted carefully, "that you had a like, what do you call it, panic attack while listening to Beethoven's Ninth?"

Her rookers started trembling, but she clasped them together. "Unusual, but not unjustified," she said in her snobby goloss.

"I don't quite pony that," I said, reaching carefully into her tray and crasting half an eggiwegg sandwich. She'd slooshy me chewing, but she couldn't viddy me taking her food.

"It doesn't matter," she said like bitterly, lowering her head to her hands. "If you're just going to bother me, you can go away."

I crasted a rookerful of her baby carrots, munching on them and messeling about what to say. I decided to be like direct. "I know what happened to you because the same thing happened to me."

She lifted her gulliver. "Really?" For one minoota she looked almost sorry for Your Humble Narrator. But then she frowned, "No. You're lying. You're just trying to make fun of me."

I was very shocked, brothers. "Why dost thou suspect me of that?" I asked between bites.

"I can hear it in your voice, and... Would you _stop_ eating my food!" she yelled. Slooshying she was too loud, she said in a soft voice, cold as ice, "I suppose Mel or Harm told you about it, and you think it's funny. Just like this," she gestured at her glazzies, "was so so funny."

"Oh no no no," I skazatted. I didn't think the Ludovico Technique was funny at all. It'd made me want to snuff myself. And then I had a thought. "But if you're still like affected by what happened, shouldn't all classical music make you feel sick, not just the Ninth?"

She wrinkled her litso in a frown. "Why?"

I finished the carrots. Why, indeed? "Right right. I guess it's different for everyone."

"Of course," she like sighed. "And me, I was only twelve years old."

"Twelve?" I couldn't help smecking a little. "What could a malenky twelve-year-old ptitsa do that was so baddiwad?"

"What did I do that was so bad?" she repeated, her goloss low and miserable. "I don't know! But it wasn't my fault, you'd be crazy to think that. _He's _the criminal—a murderer too, you know. Or maybe you don't." She looked at the floor. "I knew I shouldn't have skipped school... or gone to his apartment... but I thought I'd be safe with my friend Marty there too." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "He gave us some drinks—I'd never tasted alcohol before so I didn't know what it was—and he played our little pop discs... Yes," she looked up with a weary smile, "I used to like Goggly Gogol, Walky Talky and the Trotskys, all that pop crap... And when we were drunk he raped us both."

She stopped abruptly, putting her head in her rookers again. I was quite disappointed, brothers. I'd thought another lewdie besides myself had gone through the Ludovico Technique, but no, I was all on my oddy knocky. Of course it was baddiwad that some veck had given her the old in-out without her wanting to, but it wasn't a very new or interesting veshch to hear about. I was the only veck in the wide wide world who'd suffered from that monstrous Technique, O brothers. I felt like platching, but that's what Sonya was doing. Quietly, though, not in a loud boo-hooing way.

She took off her dark otchkies and rubbed her eyes. "And the reason I can't stand that particular piece, the last part of Beethoven's Ninth, is because he put that music on before he... he... hurt me."

When she took her hands off her glazzies so I could viddy them, I let out like a gasp. It wasn't that her eyes were so horrible to viddy—just clouded over like it was cataracts, with the skin rough and reddish around them—but when I saw her whole litso something clicked in my gulliver. So that's who she was: Sonietta, of Marty and Sonietta, one of the Melodia-record-store ptitsas I'd fillied with hours before my filthy droogs betrayed me. At that raz I'd guessed they were both ten, not twelve, but since I'd taken them to lunch and all before giving them the old in-out, it wasn't very fair to throw the slovo _rape _around, which wasn't a very nice slovo, brothers. But if Melody ever found out... Melody... For a second I thought my tick-tocker had stopped, but then I felt it thumping like 180 to the minute. "Oh Bog," I breathed. "That's horrible."

"Yes," said Sonietta—_that _Sonietta!—drying her eyes. "Rather."

"What awful malchick would do such a veshch?" I asked, just to make sure it was really me and not some other veck. Bad things had a habit of happening to her, after all.

"I recognized his picture in the papers. It was the same boy that went to jail for murder, then got out after two years just because of that Ludovico thing." Her voice was like disgusted. "Tried to off himself afterwards, but what do I care?"

"Does he have a name?" I asked, like I was dim, but I had to know.

"Alex, like you... Alex Burgess... Aaaah!" The ptitsa jumped up. "My _God_! Don't sneak up on me like that!"

Dave Purcell stood behind us, a smirk on his litso. "I was just looking for Alex Burgess myself."

"What?!" Sonietta stayed standing.

"Don't you know," said Dave, taking her cane from her and tapping me with it, "that Alex Burgess and Alex DeLarge here are the exact same person?"


End file.
